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Marianna von Martines's Dixit Dominus
in m. 10). The movement also shifts quickly between dis- minor but shifting finally toward D minor before end-
parate chords, moving from F-sharp minor to B-fl at ma- ing on a half cadence on A. This modulation allows the
jor in only three measures (Figure 11 on page 21). Most movement to act as a harmonic bridge between move-
surprisingly, the movement modulates, beginning in A ment 5 (in F major) and movement 7 (in D major), much
as a recitative in an eighteenth-cen-
tury opera might have done. Thus,
Martines incorporates extreme lo-
cal chromaticism, and “theatrical”
use of a modulating movement,
alongside the highly sedentary to-
nality of other movements.
Approaches to the Text
In setting the psalm text, Mar-
tines draws on two distinct stylis-
tic approaches: the “rhetorical”
Baroque practice of repeating
and varying small musico-textual
motives, a practice exemplifi ed by
Handel’s Dixit, and a more melodi-
cally based approach characteristic
of the galant style. German Ba-
roque composition was steeped in
a tradition of applying rhetorical
principles to musical composition.
Much of this tradition centered
on specific doctrines of Figurenlehre,
which explicitly linked certain mu-
sical figures with certain emotions
or aff ects; this discussion does not
33
apply the Figurenlehre to either Han-
del’s or Martines’s work, but simply
points out these composers’ use of
the larger rhetorical principle of
repeating and varying small inde-
pendent units. Discussing the music
of Heinrich Schütz, Bettina Varwig
casts rhetoric as an important ana-
lytical tool, “albeit not through an
immediate transfer of terms or fi g-
ures in the vein of Figurenlehre, but
as a point of departure for consid-
ering broader models of invention,
composition, and design,” which
20 CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9
